It is well known the use of intramedullary nails to treat bone fractures in tubular bones. A nail is implanted in the medullary canal of the bone across the fracture site in order to retain the bone fragments on the bone nail and to secure the bone fragments from being displaced. The nail has transverse holes and is fixed to the bone by a number of locking screws or fixation bolts which must pass through holes in the nail and into the surrounding bone material. After the nail is inserted into the medullary canal, the distal end of the nail is invisible to the naked eye. Numerous methods and apparatus have been developed to successfully place locking screws across both a fractured bone and an implanted intramedullary nail.
Usually nails are locked at both ends, close to the entry point and far away from the entry point. The region of the bone where the nail is implanted is identified as proximal and the opposite end of the intramedullary nail is distal. Nail locking is currently made using either mechanical aiming arms or X-ray guidance.
Mechanical aiming instruments, which are fixedly attached to the proximal end of the implanted bone nail, may provide concentric alignment with the proximal screw holes in order to enable reliable drilling such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,334,192, 5,766,179, and 6,514,253.
An advantage of this mechanical aiming arm is that neither the patient nor the surgeon will be exposed to the X-ray source. However, distal screw holes may not perform satisfactorily due to distortion of the intramedullary nail while being driven into the bone and/or mechanical stress on the aiming arm. Aiming-arm-guided-locking is usually successful for proximal locking since the distortion of the nail when inserted into the bone is negligible for a short length of nail. However, it is usually not successful for distal locking except for very short nails since the distortion of the nail when inserted into the bone is not negligible.
Distortion in the implanted intramedullary nail happens in the 3D space and can be analyzed into its main components:                Length variation in the axis of the intramedullary nail.        Rotational distortion in the axis of the intramedullary nail.        Flexion distortion in the plane of the intramedullary nail distal holes        Flexion distortion perpendicular to the plane of the distal holes of the intramedullary nail.        
We can accept, when using non slotted intramedullary nails provided of coplanar distal holes, that the first three mentioned distortions: (1) length distortion in the axis of the nail, (2) rotational distortion in the axis of the nail, and (3) flexion deformity in the plane of the distal screw holes of the nail, are negligible for our task of distal locking. However, flexion distortion in a plane perpendicular to the plane of the distal screw holes of the nail is very important and the distortion of concern when distal locking is the objective.
X-ray guidance is what is presently most used for distal locking except for very short nails. The procedure starts by exactly positioning the X-ray beam in the axis of the nail holes, something that is not always straightforward for the X-ray technician. The intramedullary nail will cast a dark, elongate image on the X-ray monitor, while the nail holes will appear as light circles or ovals. In particular, the nail hole will appear as a circle when the X-ray source is positioned such that the X-ray beam is parallel to the axis of the nail hole, something that is a complex 3D procedure.
After the nail holes have been located, a drill is used to drill through the bone for insertion of the locking screw. This procedure may be accomplished either with or without the use of an aiming arm guide, wherein said aiming arm guide can be fastened to the bone nail or not.
Various aiming guides are already known in the art to be used in conjunction with the X-ray source in order to accurately place the locking bone screws across both a fractured bone and an implanted intramedullary nail, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,803,976, 4,850,344, 6,656,189, 4,667,664, and 4,881,535.
All these X-ray guided procedures require the X-ray source positioned such that the X-ray beam is parallel to the axis of the nail hole. This is not always simple, and sometimes not even possible. It may also increase undesirable X-ray exposure to the surgeon, patient and operating room staff, and lengthen the surgical procedure.
Attempts have been made in the past to obtain a successful method for distal locking, which overcome the problems associated with X-ray guided locking. However, most of these systems are cumbersome and require additional bone screw holes in order to exactly assess the position of the hole in the distorted intramedullary nail after implantation into the bone.
The present invention relates to a novel apparatus and method of distal locking that allows the surgeon to target and install bone screws into an intramedullary nail in an accurate, fast and reliable manner.